Regulators are increasingly probing the crossover between privacy and competition
The EU has announced a formal investigation into Google’s advertising business, to establish whether it harmed competition by restricting or excluding its rivals from data and services. The concern is that Google has made it harder for rival online advertising services to compete in the ad tech stack given their presence at all levels of the supply chain. As part of the investigation Brussels will specifically investigate Google’s policies on tracking users “to make sure they are in line with fair competition” – a suggestion that the interplay between privacy and competition is coming under increasing scrutiny. Google is now knee-deep in antitrust investigations, with three appeals against the EU in the courts. This one also comes only days after France fined the company €200m for similar concerns. Until formal ex-ante rules are introduced to try and curb some of these concerns, we can expect more will follow.
